In praise of ... carnivals

To Londoners carnival means Notting Hill's huge multicultural extravaganza. To the Arts Council it's an idea imported from France via Trinidad, and to Venetians it is a festival of medieval origin celebrating the upending of traditional authority. But for most people in the south-west of England it is a great autumn parade dating back to 1605 and the Gunpowder Plot; the architect of that conspiracy was a local man, Robert Parsons, at least according to Bridgwater, the town nearest the village of his birth. It has been marked ever since by militant Protestants with processions, burning boats and squibs (fireworks on the end of a pole). More recently the idea has ballooned across the region, and over the next few weeks most small towns from Shaftesbury in Dorset to Pewsey in Wiltshire and Honiton in Devon will be stringing up the bunting, while for months past entrants have devoted weekends and evenings to building elaborate floats for torchlit processions through town that draw thousands of spectators. Carnivals give small towns an independent identity, a way of standing out from larger neighbours. They are an indispensable focus for dozens of clubs and societies, and a source of funds for literally hundreds of local charities. Their essence is the amateur and the voluntary. All this is threatened by the overenergetic application of health and safety laws and a new insistence that every float needs a police escort on the grounds that each is an abnormal load. Time, surely, for a sense of proportion.